By Charmaine Ndlela
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has confirmed there was no evidence of a hacking attempt during the 2024 general elections.
IEC chief electoral officer (CEO) Sy Mamabolo announced this at a media briefing at Election House in Centurion on Tuesday where he also revealed that the next Local Government Elections will be held between November 2, 2026, and January 31, 2027.
Mamabolo explained that a technical glitch, initially suspected to be tampering, was in fact linked to the transfer of results data.
“The glitch occurred when an optimisation solution was taken into production to speed up the transfer of results data from the primary database into the data warehouse. The warehouse pulls results data through a process called Extract, Transform and Load (ETL),” he said.
He added that the data warehouse runs several validations — checking whether results have been audited, whether result slips have been scanned, and whether there are no exceptions or open edit windows. From there, the data is transferred to another warehouse at the National Results Operations Centre (ROC), where results are disseminated based on completeness.
Mamabolo explained that “ready-to-display” voting district data is made available to the leaderboard, provincial ROCs, political parties, and the media, while management reports on incomplete districts are used internally. When the optimisation was implemented, however, all voting districts were mistakenly reset to the initial status of “not ready to display.”
The Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs welcomed the IEC’s report, noting areas for improvement but commending the Commission for delivering free, fair, and credible elections.
Earlier in July, the IEC had presented the 2024 National and Provincial Election (NPE) Report to the National Assembly, at the invitation of the Portfolio Committee in line with the Electoral Commission Act.
Highlighting the report, Mamabolo said: “The elections met international standards of freeness and fairness, as well as constitutional and legal standards.”
He noted that the 2024 elections were a massive undertaking, with 27.78 million registered voters — the highest since the voters’ roll was introduced in 1999.
To ease pressure, the number of voters per station was reduced from 1,900 to 910.
For the first time, a dual-column ballot paper was used in the National Assembly elections, with 90 million ballot papers printed. In total, 16.2 million citizens cast their votes.
Mamabolo also confirmed that the next general elections for municipal councils will fall due between 2 November 2026 and January 2027.
“The authority to set the date and call an election rests with the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, in consultation with the Commission,” he added.
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